


The Hand That Breaks The Fall

by plinys



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Doctor/Patient, F/M, Not So Subtle Flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 16:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tauriel works the night shift as a nurse at the ER, and Kili is a slightly accident prone idiot with a crush on the prettiest nurse in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hand That Breaks The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> So, shameless Modern AU that was spawned as the demonic offspring of two totally separate projects that I was working on and a deep need for writing something about these two lovelies.

“Wait, so you’re a male nurse,” are the first words that Tauriel hears him say, loudly so that his voice carried all through the hallway down to where she was standing working on a different patients cart.

She supposed that should have been a sign of what exactly she was getting into.

When she stood outside the door that the voice was coming from, she could see the inhabitants.  A very clearly annoyed Legolas trying to keep from snapping as his patient, a man with a mess of dark hair and no clear injures made his job more difficult than it had to be.

With a sigh, she elects to save her friend, knocking on the door frame before sliding in, “Arwen needs you to look over the patient in 5C, I’ll take over this.”

Legolas doesn’t even bother to protest, mouthing a silent ‘thank you’ before sliding out of the room.

He’s definitely going to owe her one later.

“Are you a doctor,” the patient asks, squinting at her as if he’s trying to make sense of what he’s seeing.

And at that she turns her gaze to the patient, looking for any obvious signs of what’s wrong with him, though finding no more than she had noticed from the door way. However, now that she was up close she could tell he reeked of alcohol.

“No,” she replies, “I’m a nurse.”

“I thought I already had a nurse, or a murse,” he snickers.

When she doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response, he speaks up again. “You’re really pretty for a nurse.”

“You’re drunk,” she responds back ignoring the pointed, almost hungry, gaze. She’s used to patients coming in who’ve had a bit too much to drink and suddenly think that flirting with the nurses is a good idea.

“Doesn’t mean I can’t tell that you’re pretty.”

“Do you make a habit of flirting with all your nurses,” she pauses and checks the chart for his name, “Mr. Durin.”

The patient lets out a groan at that, “It’s Kili. Kilian if you really must, but never Mr. Durin.” he says in a tone of thinly veiled disgust, “Mr. Durin is my uncle and trust me, you’re lucky not to be dealing with him.”

“That so,” she muses casually.

As she reads the chart over the patient, Kili, begins rambling off on something about family members that she has never heard of and will likely never hear of again after this night is over. 

“So what happened,” she asks cutting off his drunken explaination, he looks in fine condition other than the fact that he is quite obviously drunk. Though he does seem to squint under the light a bit suspiciously typical signs up someone with a headache

He grumbles a reply that Tauriel can’t quite hear.

“What was that?”

“I walked into a pole,” he says a bit louder, clearly embarrassed, and it takes years of training to be professional for Tauriel not to laugh about it.

Instead she says in her most monotone tone, “well, I certainly didn’t see that coming.”

His outright laugh at that is charming and really it wasn’t even that good of a joke back at him, but the patient, Kili, seems quite pleased with her. Maybe she’s just good with drunk guys.

“Alright, enough of that,” she says, her shoulders shaking softly from the effort of keeping her laughter down, “let’s get you checked out.”

A few diagnostics later, all while Tauriel did her best to dodge the thinly veiled innuendos that were tossed her way, they were all set. Nothing more than some bruises and a slight concussion, she gave him a prescription for some pain killers, a paper that with symptoms to watch out for that she had a hunch he would completely disregard, and well wishes.

“I have to repay you,” he says once they’re all settled, stopping her before she can leave, “for saving my life. Let me take you out for drinks?”

“First off, I didn’t _save_ your life. You’ve got a bit of bruising nothing more,” Tauriel says, “second, you shouldn’t be drinking after getting a bump like that one, and thirdly, and most importantly, I don’t go out for drinks with patients.”

“Even if they’re incredibly attractive,” he winks.  

“Especially not then.” 

\---

She had completely forgotten about that random guy with a concussion on a Tuesday night, until it’s Friday and suddenly he’s right back where he was before. Only this time she doesn’t run into him antagonizing Legolas, instead it’s her fellow nurse that finds her.

“Remember that total asshole from the other night that was giving me shit for being a male nurse,” he says in lieu of a greeting.

“Which one,” she replies with a smirk, that only grows when she notices his scowl. It’s almost too easy.

“Tuesday, concussion, very drunk,” he explains.

Tauriel _might_ just remember who he’s talking about. After all, it’s not every day some patient tries to proposition her. It happens rarely enough that Tauriel would commit the few to memory, because even if they were just too drunk to have a filter it was still sort of a compliment. Sort of.

However, she tells Legolas none of this and instead shrugs noncommittally, “doesn’t ring a bell.”

He groans at that, “just take this one, please.”

“No, thanks.”

“Seriously, Tauriel, you’re like the drunk whisperer.”

“The what?”

“It’s like the dog whisperer, but with drunken idiots,” Legolas explains, “you have to take this one for me. I’ll owe you.”

“You already owe me.”

“I’ll owe you even more,” he pleads, shoving the patients chart into her hands, before slipping away down the halls, “Thank you!”

She spends a good minute standing there wondering what the hell had just happened, before deciding not to question it and heading down the hallways to where he patient was.

He grins at her around the tissue paper that he’s holding to his nose when she enters, and tries to say some sort of greeting, it sounds very chipper and she’s certain that he referred to her as “the pretty one” but his voice is nasally and watery and very incoherent.

“A pleasure to see you again, Mr. Durin,” Tauriel says trying her hand at pleasantries though her tone is far too dry for her intentions to be mistaken.

“It’s Kili,” he insists stubbornly, or as stubbornly as one can with a bloody nose.

“Ah yes,” she hums, “what happened this time?”

 There’s some more rather incoherent mumbling, but she vaguely makes out the words, “broken” and “nose.”

“Another pole,” she asks, which is bordering a bit on unprofessional, but her makes a sort of hiccupy mimic of his laugh from the other day before hissing in pain.

His explanation is even harder for her to comprehend a mix of his obvious drunken state and the fact that a possibly broken nose is making his whole voice sound nasally. Not a very attractive sight, but something that for some reason has Tauriel smirking as she goes to put on her gloves.

“Now if you could just tilt your head back,” she says stepping forward. Once he complies she presses her gloved fingers against the bridge of his nose and watches for the hisses of pain. “Thankfully, it doesn’t look like it’s actually broke,” Tauriel says once her assessment is through.

“Feels broken.”

“I’ll bet,” she says lightly, “let me get you some more pain killers, then we can splint that up, and you’ll be good to go in no time.”

This time as she fixes him up there’s none of the jokes from before, hisses of pain are more common this time, and mumbled curses that he keeps trying to cut off before she notices.

“You turned me down for drinks before, but what about dinner,” he tries this time as they’re wrapping things up.  

“I just fixed your nose,” she points out.

“Exactly, I have to pay you back for saving me again.”

“Ah yes,” she says shaking her head, “but I don’t go out to dinner with guys that have broken noses.”

“You said it wasn’t broken,” Kili grumbles, “and that’s racist, against noses.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Tauriel laughs lightly, “are you certain you’re not concussed again?”

“I don’t know, you’re the doctor.”

\---

The third time he comes back his chart ends up in her hands without anything preempting it other than Arwen shooting a smile over her shoulder. It’s not until she opens that chart that she realizes why and silently curses her luck.

 When she gets there he looks chipper as ever to see her or would if it wasn’t for the fact that he had the very obvious beginnings of a black eye and his eyebrow was most certainly split. However, none of this even seems to faze him as Kili busies himself making casual small talk.

“-and then my brother, the overprotective ass, and I mean that in the nicest of ways, insisted upon driving me over here. Even though I’m completely fine.”

“You’re bleeding,” she points out, bringing up an antiseptic wipe to disinfect the site of the injury.

“Tis but a flesh wound,” Kili replies back without a pause, “plus the punks deserved it.”

“They deserved to beat you up,” Tauriel inquires quizzically, raising a single eyebrow in question.

“You should see the other guys,” he says hastily, “they’re ten times worse off than I am.”

“I can only imagine.”

\---

“I think I might have eaten something that I’m allergic too.”

“You think?”

“Well, I was drinking-“

“Oh wow, really? I never would have guessed.”

\---

“He’s back,” Arwen says

“Who’s back,” she asks already certain what the answer will be.

The other woman just raises a single eyebrow at her, “your usual,” and Tauriel lets out a sigh, of course it would be him.

“He asked for you,” Arwen says with the slightest of smiles.

 She’s the romantic one, who is engaged to her childhood sweetheart and certainly doesn’t understand that there was no logical reason for somebody to repeatedly come back injured, just to flirt with their nurse.

“Can’t you-“

“I’m busy, other patients,” she says, with that silly grin still there, “you have fun though.”

There is a laugh from behind her and Tauriel whirls around just in time to see Legolas straining with effort to keep his laughter in.

“This is all your fault, I hope you know that,” she said shooting him a dangerous glare, that didn’t seem to help his laughter at all, “consider this the last time I ever do you a favor.”

“Just way, one day you’ll be thanking me.”

“Oh please.”

\---

“I shut my hand in my car door,” Kili says, “and I think it might be broken.”

“If you can move your fingers it’s not broken.”

“You know, I said that, but my brother was there and he panics and here I am.”

“So here you are,” she replies with a smile.

\---

“WebMD says I might be dying,” is his excuse this time.

“And you listen to WebMD?”

“Not usually,” Kili says, giving her a mischievous grin, “figured I’d get a second opinion.”

“Which is why you’re here,” Tauriel

“This could have waited till the morning,” she says snapping the folder shut, “you could have just gotten an appointment with your usual physician and had this all sorted out there was no need to you rush into ER and no doubt wait hours in the waiting room for this.”

“I didn’t want to take any chances,” Kili says with a shrug, as if her sharp attitude had not even phased him, “I mean, WebMD said death, the morning might have been too late.”

Tauriel let out a long sigh at that and rubbed at her temples. She wasn’t supposed to belittle the patients, wasn’t supposed to tell them just how moronic they sounded, or how wrong they are. She was supposed to be polite and friendly and comforting. Though for some reason, she figured that with this _particular_ patient she would have a little bit of leeway.

“When sites like that say that a symptom could be death, they mean if it went untreated for a long period of time,” Tauriel says, “though I think you already knew that.”

He sheepishly smiles at her comment, “I might have.”

She rolls her eyes at that, “is there anything else you need, Mr. Durin.”

“It’s Kili, but uh, not really,” Kili shrugs his shoulders, “unless, if you wanted to go out some time-“

“How did I know,” she says with a laugh.  

“I’m not that predictable.”

“You’re pretty predictable.”

\---

“I can’t sleep.”

“That’s not really a reason a person normally comes into ER.”

“You know me, overly cautious, slightly neurotic,” Kili replies smile wide.

“Overly cautious isn’t a word I would use to describe you,” Tauriel returns effortlessly.

“Well, somebody has to keep you on your toes.”

\---

“You can’t keep injuring yourself just to get my attention,” Tauriel says as she moves about checking his vitals.

She’s lost count of just how many times she has seen him in the past few weeks. Far too many times for a normal person. She’s certain that he’s just looking for excuses at this point.

“Maybe I’m just accident prone,” he offers.

She laughs at that, “only during the god awful hours of the night?”

Kili shrugs noncommittally at her assessment. “My mother says I’m reckless.”

“I can see why. Somebody needs to get you a bubble to live in.,” Tauriel muses, “I mean what would you mother say if she knew that you were in ER nearly every week?”

“Probably wouldn’t be surprised,” he replies with a shrug, “would probably ask for a picture though.”

“Of your injuries and imaginary maladies?”

“No,” he says, and for the first time, since the day they met when Kili embarrassingly admitted to walking into a pole, he actually looked a bit sheepish, “of the reason, I keep coming back.”

This is the moment when she’s supposed to remind him of how absurd this all is, this strange flirting thing they have going on. She’s supposed to frown at him and insist that she’s not interested, that she _cannot_ date patients.

Though that wouldn’t be a problem if he was able to stop being a patient on a weekly basis.

“So you admit it,” is what she says instead, ignoring the pounding of her heart against her rib cage.

“When have I ever denied it?”

_Just moments before_ she wants to say, but the words never come. Technically he never did deny her claims, and for a moment she’s expecting another offer of a date. Wondering if this time she’d say yes, and throw out how unprofessional it is.

Instead Tauriel listens to the rational part of her brain, the part the keeps reminding herself that she’s working and this is highly inappropriate and says, “maybe if you’d stop hurting yourself to get my attention, I’d stop having to turn you down.”

“Is that a deal?”

\---

There are flowers waiting for her the next time she goes to shift.

The card attached to them simply reads: _‘I took your advice, no pointless injuries, living in a bubble, and all that._ And rather than signing his name there is simply a ten digit phone number scrawled onto the bottom of the card.

She laughs at the notion when it first appears, takes a brief moment to stop and smell the roses, and ignores the pointed stares of her fellow nurses.

\---

“Staring at it isn’t going to change anything,” Legolas says as he joins her in the break room. The room where Tauriel has been sitting for the last five minutes staring at her cellphone’s contact list as if expecting something to happen, while her coffee grew cold beside her.

“I know that,” she says her gaze moving up to meet the quizzical one of her friend.

“Do you really?”

\---

“Hey Kili, this is Tauriel from ER. I – shit,” her fingers quickly hit the number seven on the phones keypad waiting as the automated voice chirps telling her that her message has been deleted.

She took a deep breath to steady herself before trying again, “Hi, this is Tauriel. You left your phone number on a vase of flowers and I just thought that I…”

Deleting the message was all too easy of a motion to repeat. She’d been doing this for the past half an hour. Barely worked up the nerve to call him and then he didn’t even answer, she had intended to hang up after that. To just forget about the whole thing, but a chipper voicemail greeting had welcomed her, a happy voice that joked about leaving messages unless she was somebody by the name of Fili who she could only guess was the brother he had mentioned a few times before.

“Hello, this is Tauriel-“

“You gave me your number then didn’t even pick up your phone-“

“I’m sure there’s some reasonable explanation for this. Like you’re busy or at work or walking into a telephone pole-“  

“I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner I’m not even sure why I-“

“You have no idea how nerve wracking this is-“

“Alright maybe you do-“

“I should have just said yes to getting drinks with you-“

“Oh fuck-“

In the end she doesn’t leave a message at all. It’s easier this way.

\---

There are moments when she remembers just how mortal they all are, when the sirens of the ambulance can be heard throughout the facility and the EMTs rush in wheeling somebody by on a stretcher. Some nurse is going to be rushed in there to take the preliminary assessments of somebody on the brink between life and death.

Sometimes when she stares into the mirror after a long night rubbing at the circles under her eyes, she wonders if they’re there from exhaustion or something else entirely, memories of nightmares that feel far too like her own.

“Tauriel,” comes a frantic voice, an unfamiliar tone on her longtime friend and coworker, who grabs her arm, “it’s your friend. He was in the accident and-“

She doesn’t listened to the rest of what the other nurse is about to say, all of it seems to go one in and out the other. Her heart stops beating in her chest and it feels as if the whole world has slowed down. Too many what ifs swirl in her head and this is not the moment for this, she needs to be professional, she needs to deal with the patients at hand, she needs not to let her emotions get the best of her.

Except then she remembers the stretcher that was rolled in and her stomach turns.

When somebody asks at where she’s going and she hears Arwen offering some half-baked explanation about how one of the victims was Tauriel’s _boyfriend_ she doesn’t even bother to stop her.   

“I need to,” she starts to say, but there’s a hand on her shoulder, pushing her down into a chair.

A familiar soothing voice that says, “what you need to do is sit down,” in the only comfort he can manage, “I’ll figure out what’s going on, you stay here.”

She’s not certain how long it takes until Legolas returns; it certainly feels like an eternity. Though eventually he does return, giving her a room number, and gentle reassurances that she brushes off.

Tauriel honestly doesn’t believe that he’s fine until she finds her way to the hospital room, and he’s sitting there, looking as resilient as ever.

“Have I died? Are you an angel,” is the first thing Kili ask when he sees her, his left arm slung in a sling, eye still black, or maybe this is a new black eye, it’s hard to tell.

“I saw them bringing a stretcher in and I thought,” she starts and stops herself. 

“He hit me,” he explains, “So he ended up getting the shorter end of the stick… I’ll have you know this one wasn’t my fault, I was stone cold sober, it wasn’t even-“

Whatever else he was going to say doesn’t matter, because she’s so relieved at seeing him safe and alive that she says _fuck it_ to that rational part of her brain that has been holding her back. Kissing him feels perfect and there’s a voice in the back of her head that says they could have been doing this weeks ago.

Why weren’t they?

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” she says when she pulls back.

“Me too,” he breaths out a second later, eyes still wide and there’s such wonder there.

And when he leans in this time everything just seems to fit perfectly together.

 “Rumor has it this hospital has really shitty coffee, it’s not much of a first date, but-“

“It’s perfect.”

\---

“You know,” Kili says later when they’re sipping on the cafeteria’s lukewarm coffee, “if I had known it was this easy I would have done this weeks ago.” 


End file.
